You can handle the truth! Why cinema suddenly loves conspiracy theories

Thank heavens for cinema, that light in the darkness and the source of all shocking scoops. It tells us to wake up and take action before it’s too late: that we live in the Matrix, that the CIA killed JFK, that our spouse is a robot and our boss an Andromedan. It even suggests an Escher-style staircase beneath the Tokyo subway and a disembodied zombie leg stalking the hook-up parks of Brazil.

How might we react if a trusted friend said all this? Would we be entertained or appalled? Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day sits at the centre of a new wave of paranoid cinema. “People have a right to know the truth,” declares the young whistleblower in the film, while its hero carries a backpack of state secrets that purport to prove the existence of aliens.

Brazil, Tokyo

cinema, conspiracy theories, disclosure day, steven spielberg, whistleblower, paranoid cinema, matrix, cia, jfk, aliens